A Midweek Opening Pattern in Urban Black Films

By LINDA LEE

Published: March 10, 1997

It is Wednesday, 8 P.M., uptown, the opening night of the raucous comedy ''Booty Call'' at the Nova Cinema, 147th and Broadway, in Harlem.

There are no crowds outside the old movie house. Inside Theater 1, about 30 customers have gathered, mostly black young men waiting for the show to begin. They sit through trailers for ''Volcano,'' ''Anaconda,'' ''Murder at 1600'' and ''Hoodlum'' -- films that play well uptown, where the teen-age boys, like teen-agers everywhere, are inveterate moviegoers.

A few more patrons drift into the theater, dressed in puffy North Face jackets and knit hats. They are chased to their seats by the beam of the heavy-duty flashlight wielded by an intimidating, large usher.

Eighty minutes later the show is over. The patrons have had a good time for their $6.50, sometimes laughing so loud and so long considerable chunks of dialogue were lost. But never mind.

It is a Wednesday night in urban America, and another movie aimed at its young black audience has had a midweek opening timed to keep crowds, and trouble, to a minimum.

For the entertainment industry, films aimed at the young black urban market represent a threat and a promise -- a threat to safety but a promise of cash. The Wednesday opening, first used by New Line Cinema in October 1991 for the urban comedy ''House Party 2,'' and widely copied since, has become the preferred way of balancing the risk-reward ratio.

Across the country on its opening night, ''Booty Call'' took in only $750,000 from 1,272 screens. But by Sunday night, March 2, it had brought in $8 million and come in fourth in the weekend box-office sweepstakes. Most important, the movie opened without incident.

Most movies open on Fridays to insure the largest possible audience for the first, crucial days of a film's release. But in the case of certain black urban films, the studios try to diffuse the crowds and lessen the prospect of angry patrons being turned away at a sold-out opening.

The goal is to avoid the gang violence and shootings that plagued the Friday-night premieres in March 1991 of ''New Jack City'' and that July for ''Boyz 'N the Hood.'' Since then, films for a similar audience have tended to open in midweek.

The Wednesday openings have not avoided trouble entirely, however. Official statistics are hard to come by, but last November, on the Wednesday-night premiere of ''Set It Off,'' a sort of ''Girlz 'N the Hood'' starring the rap artist Queen Latifah, there were, according to Dale Pollock, who produced the film with Oren Koules, ''three shootings, none inside the theater, but in parking lots outside the theaters.''

Fear of such violence has led to the Wednesday opening, a custom little recognized by anyone outside the entertainment business. Movies like ''Set It Off'' have been red-lined into their own universe, where the industry question ''What was the gross?'' is followed almost immediately by ''Was there any trouble?'' Because of their content and audience, such movies are given their own ''safe'' night of the week to open and sometimes provided with security guards, paid for by the studios.

''There is heightened security with these films -- not for movies like 'Waiting to Exhale' but for some others,'' said Jackie Bazan, a black executive who runs Bazan Entertainment in Jersey City. ''Theater owners are concerned.''

Mark Gill, president of marketing and distribution for Miramax Films, a unit of Walt Disney which released ''Rhyme and Reason,'' a documentary about rap music that opened on Wednesday, was at Columbia Pictures when it released ''Boyz 'N the Hood.'' ''The total on 'Boyz' was 33 wounded, 2 dead,'' Mr. Gill, who is white, said. ''Those are serious numbers. You haven't seen that again, because of the Wednesday opening.''

But Jesus Nova, a Dominican-American who owns and manages the Nova Cinema, contends that the studios have become cautious to a fault. They are ''happy to take your money, but too scared to meet you.''

On a Friday night, he insists, he can manage the opening of films like ''Set It Off.''

''I think it's now getting to the point where Wednesday openings are hurting the studios,'' he said. ''Missing that Friday harms the potential gross of the films and hurts the theaters.''

Although blacks represent only 12.5 percent of the population, they constitute 20 percent of American box-office receipts each year, according to industry data. The young black male audience, in particular, is heavily represented.

But for films aimed squarely at young black men, said Chris Pula, president of theatrical marketing for Warner Brothers, a unit of Time Warner, ''there are a number of deaths and incidents, fights in the parking lot, setting the curtains on fire, ripping up seats, breaking toilets in restroom.''

Not always, of course. Such incidents do not seem to happen, for instance, at the Magic Johnson Theaters, a black-owned theater chain where disruptive behavior and gang colors are prohibited.

The company, a joint venture between Sony Theaters and the N.B.A. star for whom it is named, operates in black or mixed-ethnicity neighborhoods and has theaters at the Crenshaw Plaza in South-Central Los Angeles, in Atlanta, and is building one in Houston. The company has plans to move into New York -- in Harlem and in Jamaica, Queens.

According to Kenneth Lombard, a black executive who is president of Magic Johnson Theaters, the secret to opening any film is ''no tolerance for the things that disrupt the moviegoing experience.''

At his theaters, he said, before the movie begins, a film of Magic Johnson comes on the screen, inviting the audience to leave their hostility and any gang loyalties outside.